Brass musical instruments include without limitation the bugle, trumpet, cornet, flugel horn, piccolo trumpet, French horn, trombone, baritone, euphonium, and tuba. Such instruments typically terminate in a hollow leadpipe, into which a metal mouthpiece is inserted. While playing the brass musical instrument, the musician's lips are pressed against the mouthpiece. Often such instruments must be played outdoors in cold or even freezing weather. For example, the musician and instrument might be part of a marching band that is called upon to play outdoors in all seasons, perhaps a military band that plays martial music at funerals in winter. Playing brass instruments in extremely cold temperatures is very uncomfortable to the musician. The lips may become so cold and numb while blowing into the metal mouthpiece as to interfere with good playing of the instrument, and may even suffer injury.
Attempts to insulate the musician's lips from the often freezing cold temperature of the instrument mouthpiece may include pre-heating the mouthpiece before it is inserted into the hollow projecting leadpipe portion of the instrument. However this is not always practical and once the mouthpiece is inserted into the leadpipe and the instrument is exposed to cold temperature, the mouthpiece temperature will drop to ambient temperature. Another remedy is to apply lip balm to the musician's lips, to provide a small measure of thermal insulation from the cold mouthpiece of the instrument. However the lip balm provides minimal thermal protection for the musician, and can wear away as the instrument is played. These are stop gap measures at best, and are not very effective for long durations of music playing in very cold temperatures. Some musicians use plastic mouthpieces to improve lip comfort in cold weather playing, but such mouthpieces degrade the quality of the music.
What is needed is a heater system for use with the metal mouthpiece of a brass wind music instrument. Such heater system should controllably warm the instrument mouthpiece at a temperature comfortable to the musician, and should maintain a musician determined temperature for hours, even it the instrument is played in extremely cold, varying ambient temperature. The heater system preferably should be entirely self-contained such that no external preheating is required, and should not require the use of chemical lip balms or the like. The heater system should be retrofittable to existing musical instruments and should be portable. Preferably such heater should allow the musician to vary the desired temperature of the instrument mouthpiece in closed-loop fashion, even while the instrument is being used, which desired temperature should then be maintained, even in changing ambient temperature.
The present invention provides such a heater system.